The social media reach of these 14 Twitter accounts alone is over 22 million. Last night though between 9pm and 11pm #IF wasn’t trending. What was trending was the Chelsea player Eden Hazard assaulting a ball boy during a Capital One Cup Semi-final.

It got me thinking about several issues connected with social media and development. Have we got social media fatigue? Does a story seeded on social media carefully coordinated by over 100 NGOs and faith communities amplify a message or weaken it? People tend to multitask when perusing social media. They also tend to read articles quicker than they would do in the printed press. Why is the #IF campaign not front page news today? Is an assault by a professional footballer more important than ensuring Food for Everyone across the world? Are the media and indeed the general public that shallow?

Professor Charlie Watson questions if the sector has ran out of communication ideas and whether the public will find this campaign confusing as a collection of different demands. I’m confused a bit myself. The only ‘calls to action’ seem to be:

1. Sign up for a newsletter
2. Watch a short film
3. Share this website via social media.

I’ve signed up (along with 30,000 others), I’ve watched the film and I’ve shared extensively via @socialmedia4D. I’ll now have to wait to see how I can help and if the campaign is a success.

I was preparing a lecture the other day on the use of social media by International NGOs. During my research I watched a lot of videos on Youtube and I noticed how few views many of the celebrity videos had received.

One good example is a group of videos called “What could you buy with 50 pence” made by ActionAid with celebrities including Gabby Logan, Katherine Kelly, Sarah Alexander, Fay Ripley and Mark Watson. Now I’m not big on celebrities and I don’t even know who 2 of these people are, however, what I noticed was how each video had received hardly any views. Mainly the early hundreds, some lower. I wondered to myself – how much does it cost to produce these videos? I don’t know the answer. I presume that the celebrities offer their services free of charge. I’m sure they do. But do they get expenses? If so, how much does it cost to get 5 “celebs” into a studio? How much did the film crew get? How much was editing etc. At the end of the day – was it worth it?

I then found a video by Robbie Williams on the UNICEF channel. I’ve heard of Robbie Williams I was amazed that it had less than 5000 views (at the time of writing). Surely with Robbie’s fan base it would attract more views and shares than this via social media? Obviously not. Again, how much did it cost to shoot? Don’t get me wrong it may be very cheap. But what is the return on investment (ROI)? What is the main objective of the video? Robbie’s film has a clear call to action to donate money to Soccer Aid. The film is also educational. Maybe UNICEF are happy with the results? Again I don’t know the answer.

So after seeing these videos and plenty more I started to wonder – Is celebrity endorsement for International Development a good thing? I was then kindly sent a case study on UNICEF about their campaign #SahelNOW and how it was endorsed by Selena Gomez. Her video has had nearly 50,000 views. She has nearly 14 million followers on Twitter and each Tweet about the campaign was retweeted around 5,000 times. I won’t go into all the detail here but the campaign was a resounding success. If you want to see more stats there’s a great slideshare – #SahelNOW: Sound the Alarm, One Million Children at Risk.

So celebrity endorsement does work, esecially when you have an ‘A’ lister who’s dating Justin Beiber (at the time). There are plenty of other success stories about celebrity endorsement via social media. You just have to look at #Kony2012.

Anyway, today I was talking to my colleague about celebrity endorsement and he kindly guided me to some work by Dan Brockington who researches Celebrity and Development. His blog is well worth perusing. The research isn’t complete yet but there are some early findings, one of which is that celebrities are often the winners of charity advocacy. That’s a discussion for another day….

I watched the horrific Delhi Gang Rape story unfold on social media over Christmas. I promised myself and more importantly my family that I wouldn’t blog over Christmas. Today’s superb blog ‘Social Media and Protest – The Indian Spring?’ by Professor Ravinda Barn has insipred me to write down my earlier thoughts which mirror her own – “To what extent were the India protests organized by Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media?

The first I knew of the story was via Twitter when Ghazala Airshad (@ghazairshad) shared a blog post on 23rd December by Indian writer Nilanjara Roy ‘Notes from Raisina Hill’. Roy talks to many of the protesters and notes “Almost all of them heard about the protest on Facebook and Twitter, or from friends—not through the mainstream media.” She notices two very different types of protesters. In the morning peaceful protests mainly by students and by the afternoon people there just for the TV cameras. I wonder whether at the time of writing her blog she thought the story would snowball globally.

I was also intrigued on New Years Eve by the article in the Times of India “The year social media came of age”. It made me wonder whether the tweets by Sambhavi Saxena were the catalyst for the story reaching the masses across the world. I don’t think so looking back at online articles, but I’m sure it helped.

Reading Saxena’s Twitter Account I was amazed at how often she had tweeted whilst being detained. I wonder whether police officers around the world will make sure they confiscate people’s phones when they make arrests in the future?

I love that Professor Barn’s calls this the Indian Spring. I wish I’d come up with that great linkbait title, however I think she could be right. Is this just the start of the Indian Spring? Will the government’s promises to review safety for girls and women in India be carried out? Only time will tell, but I truly hope so!